XenClient 2 and AMD Graphics

If you have a PC/notebook that is compatible with XenClient 2 HCL and you are the lucky person with a AMD graphic card, you are now able to enable passthrough the AMD graphic to the virtual machine and delivering “true” 3D graphics.

Summary

This document describes how to install the AMD plugin and ioemu update packages on the AMD Graphics-enabled platforms running XenClient 2.1

Background

XenClient 2.0 and 2.1 supported AMD Radeon™ HD 6470M and the FirePro™ M5950 graphics solutions on several of the Hewlett-Packard platforms listed on the XenClient hardware compatibility list. By installing the AMD plugin and ioemu update packages described in this article, support for these graphics solutions is now also provided for Dell Precision platforms. In addition, some power management issues have also been addressed with these updates.

Requirements

You need a USB drive to perform this upgrade as described. The update packages add up to about 3.5 MB so a small-capacity device will be fine.

If you are still running XenClient 2.0, it is recommended that you upgrade to the latest 2.1 release found on our XenClient download page.Download it now

If you have already created any virtual machines (VMs), please make sure that you have all VMs turned off before installing the packages.

In addition to the two update packages, the source file for the ioemu file is also provided on the download link. The source file is ioemu-src_git-r8017-xc.7430.556.31.5_all.ipk

Procedure

The following steps detail how to install these updates on XenClient for your AMD Graphics-enabled platform.

  • Download the two package files needed for the upgrade from here and copy them to the root of a USB device. (If the link does not take you directly to the links to the package files, scroll down the page about half way; alternatively, you can paste #1612513 at the end of the URL and hit ENTER). The two packages are:
amd-plugin_2.02-r0.xc7.5_i686core2.ipk
and
ioemu_git-r8017-xc.7430.556.31.5_i686core2.ipk
  • Plug the USB drive into one of the available USB ports on the platform you intend to upgrade.
  • From the Citrix Receiver for XenClient (UIVM) screen, press CTRL+SHIFT+T to open a terminal session as shown in the following screen shot, and enter the password you created when installing XenClient at the prompt:

Figure 2

  • Once you are logged in, at the command line prompt enter the command
fdisk –l

This will display a list of storage devices on the system. Identify which device ID is assigned to your USB device. In our example it is sdb and the only partition it has is sdb1.

(Note that on your system this might be different depending on what devices might be present. To make sure you select the correct device, look for some information that describes your USB device. In our example we have an 8-GB USB device. In the output of the fdisk command, 8036 MB is a good indicator of that being the USB device.)

  • Enter the command

mkdir /mnt/usb

to create a directory for the USB device you plugged in earlier:
  • Enter the command
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
to mount the USB device to the directory created in the previous step. (Be sure to put the actual device ID for your system where sdb1 appears in this example.)
  • Now that you have mounted your USB device, you can install the first package. Enter the command
opkg install /mnt/usb/amd-plugin_2.02-r0.xc7.5_i686core2.ipk
which installs the AMD plugin package.
  • With the AMD package installed, install the second package. Enter the command
opkg install /mnt/usb/ioemu_git-r8017-xc.7430.556.31.5_i686core2.ipk
which updates the ioemu package.
  • Once both packages have been installed, you need to reboot the system. Enter the command
reboot

After the system reboots, you can enable 3D graphics on the system.

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